Key events
Prelude
Hello and welcome to Arthur Ashe Stadium for tonight’s US Open women’s semi-final doubleheader. We’ve got a jewel of a twinbill ahead with Coco Gauff and Karolina Muchova meeting in the opening match followed by Madison Keys and Aryna Sabalenka in the nightcap. The Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd will no doubt be pulling for the prospect of an all-American final on Saturday, but the sixth-seeded Gauff and 17th-seeded Keys will each have their hands full tonight with opponents more than capable of playing spoiler.
First up it’s Gauff against Muchova, the 10th-seeded Czech who reached her first career grand slam final earlier this year at Roland Garros. Their lone career meeting came only three weeks ago in the Cincinnati final, which the American teenager won in straight sets to capture the biggest title of her career to date.
Gauff, the youngest player to reach the US Open semi-finals since Serena Williams in 1999, became the betting favorite to win the tournament after top-seeded Iga Swiatek’s fourth-round ouster, but there will be heaps of pressure on those 19-year-old shoulders at tonight’s penultimate hurdle and it will be fascinating to see how she handles it.
Plenty more to come from another sweltering night at Flushing Meadows, where the players due on court for their warm-ups in about 10 minutes.
Bryan will be here shortly. Here’s Tumaini Carayol’s lookahead to Friday’s twinight doubleheader of US Open men’s semi-finals.